The first actions of the new government are perceived as reassuring by most, Gallup International Balkan reported on Friday after conducting a survey among 802 adults between July 14 and 19. Some 45.9% of the respondents are optimistic about the work ahead, while 43.3% are pessimistic.
Expectations and assessments
Bulgarians clearly acknowledge that the current government may not be the best, but it has been the only sensible option – 62.7% agree with this statement, while 32.8% disagree.
The caretaker governments of the last few years enjoy an overall positive assessment with 52.9% of the respondents seeing those governments in a positive light, while 35.7% seeing the governments in a negative light. The remaining 11.4% struggle to judge.
Nearly 61% of the respondents show a natural opposition to the notion of removing the option of caretaker governments from the Constitution. Another 29.4% express no such opposition. Gallup’s analysts suspect that one of the factors behind these figures is the relatively high popularity that President Rumen Radev enjoys compared to other Bulgarian politicians. Some 59.4% do not believe that he defends Russian interests rather than those of Bulgaria, while 31.1% believe so. The rest of the respondents are uncertain.
The opinions race
Both Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) and GERB-UDF’s popularity with their respective electorates seem to have suffered from the rotational government that the two coalitions established together. It is a popular opinion that both coalitions deceived their voters by working together, however, while 53.6% believe that GERB deceived its own voters, 63.9% believe that CC-DB did this to its voters.
Nearly half of the respondents or 49.4% agree that the American Embassy here exerted pressure to have the two coalitions work together, while 33.7% do not agree with it.
The majority of respondents, 64.2%, agree that candidates for local elections should not have relatives connected to the former State Security, which operated as part of the country’s communist regime. The rest of the respondents have no opinion on the matter.
Regarding the appointment of Borislav Sarafov as acting Prosecutor General, 60.9% believe that his appointment was a bad choice, 15.9% believe that the appointment was good, the remaining 23.2% could not judge.
The difficult decisions facing the country
When asked whether they approve of Bulgaria becoming more actively involved in assisting Ukraine with weapons, ammunition and military equipment, 20% approved, and 78.1% disapproved.
Regarding the timing of the adoption of the euro, 71.9% think it is better for Bulgaria not to rush the introduction, while 21.4% are in favour of speeding up the process. Such data shows the need for a decisively more active information and persuasion campaign, the analysts noted.
When asked what the priority of the budget should be, 49.0% were more likely to prioritize the country’s financial stability, while 45.1% were more drawn to the budget’s social highlights.
On the matter of North Macedonia’s entry into the EU, the vast majority of respondents, 86.2%, agree that it is more important to meet the Bulgarian demands, even if this delays North Macedonia’s EU accession. On the other hand, 7.5% think that North Macedonia joining the EU should be prioritized, even if some of Bulgaria’s demands fail to be met.
